Temple sleep, or incubation, names the ancient practice of sleeping within a temple precinct specifically in order to receive a healing dream or a direct divine visitation, most fully documented at the sanctuaries of the Greek healing god Asclepius, above all the great sanctuary at Epidaurus, where the sick traveled, underwent purification rites, and lay down to sleep in a dedicated hall, the abaton, in hope that Asclepius himself would appear in a dream to heal them directly or to prescribe a specific remedy or ritual for temple priests to carry out afterward.
Inscriptions recovered from Epidaurus and other Asclepian sanctuaries record numerous individual cures attributed to this process, preserved by the sanctuary itself as testimonial evidence of the god's healing power and, not incidentally, as advertisement encouraging further pilgrimage, giving modern historians an unusually direct textual window into how the ritual was understood and marketed by its own ancient practitioners. Non-venomous snakes were kept within Asclepian sanctuaries as living emblems of the god, associated with healing and renewal through the snake's shedding of its skin, and temple dogs are also recorded as part of the sanctuary's therapeutic and symbolic apparatus at several sites.